Why My One Year Consulting Anniversary Is A Reason to Celebrate
One of the many lessons this past year has taught me is that everything you go through and experience isn’t always for you. Oftentimes, it’s so you can help other people.
I have two degrees in marketing, but when I was in school, digital marketing courses weren’t offered; we were still using AOL messenger at that time (do you remember their screen name?). So when I was still pursuing a styling career and wanted to learn how to attract more virtual clients, I invested in multiple coaching programs to learn new ways to grow my business online. People liked the pictures I posted of my work online but that didn’t convert to a consistent flow of client bookings.
Full transparency: I never had a consistent flow of clients which is why I always continued to have a full-time job.
When I quit working as a stylist, I didn’t know what was next. One thing that never crossed my mind was using the skills I innately had and the ones I learned to help others in their business. It’s one thing to learn to use the skills you learn for your business; it’s a different type of pressure to use them to help someone else’s business. But during June 2021 I was minding my business when my friend Dr. Ramon Goings asked me to join the Done Dissertation team after we were having a casual conversation about social media and I shared advice on how he could strategically create content. I was sharing this info to him with no intention of managing his company’s social media. But Ramon (and his wife Renee, my friend and Director of Operations) had other plans!
At first, we thought he just needed help with editing and managing the company’s social media content, but when I took a deep dive into the company website, how emails were collected, the way social media content was posted, and the lead magnet used to generate leads, I realized Done Dissertation needed to streamline its marketing strategy.
Fun fact: In the coaching programs I took in 2020, one of the cohort students told me that I would be great at coaching and teaching. He was impressed with the way that I engaged with the assignments and coaching calls and said I should consider teaching that online marketing content one day. Signs are all around us and we don’t even know it!
I’ll admit it, I was nervous. It’s one thing to try out marketing strategies for your own business. It’s another to implement them for someone else. But the beautiful thing about this experience is that Ramon and Renee saw the potential in me before I saw it in myself. Since joining Done Dissertation, we’ve seen incredible growth. More specifically here are just a few things I helped tighten up at Done Dissertation:
We got more clear on who we serve. Done Dissertation has always had a niche, but I challenged the team to niche down even further which has increased the quality of applicants we receive for the coaching program.
I worked with the web designer to update the Done Dissertation website; my goal was to have the site redesigned so it worked as a sales funnel for the company.
I created and manage the email marketing strategy that allows Done Dissertation to communicate with its audience on a regular basis. We have grown the email list by over 200% in a year.
I created a social media strategy so we know the type of content to post and when to post it. Posting randomly on social media will not generate leads. There should be a method to your posting.
And of course, I edit, schedule, and manage all social media content across social media platforms which has increased the brand’s visibility and community engagement online.
You can check out some of our highlights over the past year here. We are getting better and better, learning and growing along the way. And because of the work I’ve done for Done Dissertation, Ramon and Renee have been consistently encouraging me to market myself so I can help others achieve these types of results (check out my consulting services here). Does that make me uncomfortable? Absolutely because I am used to (and like) being in the background but I am continuously learning to embrace being uncomfortable. That’s where we grow the most.
When we first started working together, we said it was a coincidence that I had stopped styling and was moving back to the East coast at the same time Done Dissertation needed help with marketing. A year later, we now recognize that it may be less of a coincidence and more of divine timing.
